How One Girl’s Birthmark Sparked A Powerful Conversation About Bullying (and Beauty)

Selfie importance.

When Lexxie Hartford of Staffordshire, England decided to post three selfies on the image hosting site Imgur, she was just doing what any other 20-something does these days for fun. But, suddenly, the images started to get a ton of attention.

Just days after posting, she noticed comments pouring in, all addressing the same thing — a prominent birthmark on her right cheek. Some were supportive, while others were just plain mean, associating the mark with domestic abuse. Because of the amount of curiosity and questions in her photo comments, she decided to repost the images, but this time with an added explanation about her appearance.

Her new album is now titled “My birthmark + heterochromia (explained),” and has been viewed over 100,000 times. While she does have heterochromia, a condition where people are born with more than one eye color, Lexxie knew the attention was really all on her birthmark. She explained in a caption under the thread of photos that “people do mistake it for a bruise.” Lexxie also went on to say that she’s “absolutely not self conscious about it at all”, and she’s actually fond of her birthmark. She also revealed to ABC News that she’d been approached by two reality shows: The Undateables and Too Ugly For Love?, something that she found extremely frustrating and obviously turned down. The biggest point she drove home was that she can understand why people in similar situations would want to cover theirs up and why people have questions, but she says “I like to show it off to raise awareness”.

It’s great to see that Lexxie is embracing her natural beauty. It’s even greater to see that she’s opening line of communication on a subject that some might have been previously too scared to talk about. It’s not every day a selfie can spread awareness.